The Pendulum
NEWS
Thursday, August 28, 2003 •Page 9
ELITE to launch online piracy education program
From page 1
federal subpoenas against sus
pected copyright-infringers, with
approximately 75 new subpoenas
being filed each day.
The article said that the U.S.
District Court in Washington has
bee;i forced to re-assign employ
ees due to the volume of paper
work.
In April, the recording industry
sued four college students
accused of running illegal peer-
to-peer programs on campus net
works.
Out-of-court settlements
ranged from $12,000 to $17,500,
according to an article in The
Chronicle of Higher Education,
which Chris Fulkerson, director
of instructional and campus tech
nologies, said has covered the
piracy issue extensively with
respect to school-owned net
works.
Subpoenas have also been sent
to the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Boston College and
DePaul University, among other
schools.
“Other colleges are being used
as examples,” ELITE student
integration specialist Danielle
Wilson said, “We don’t want Elon
to be used as one.”
Fulkerson said the university
has been contacted by the RIAA
in the past, alerting him to stu
dents sharing a large volume of
songs. “We’ve talked to the stu
dent and got them to stop,” he
said.
The RIAA’s latest campaign
skips the middleman however,
leaving students to fend for them
selves.
To help students do that, ELITE
is heeding the call of Fulkerson
and Dean of Students Smith
Jackson and is developing an edu
cation program about the issue.
Other colleges are being used as examples.
We don’t want Elon to be used as one.
— Danielle Wilson, ELITE student integration specialist
“It just seems a lot of students
aren’t aware that this is illegal and
people are being prosecuted,”
Jackson said.
According to the Pew Internet
& American Life Project, four out
of five students nationwide who
download music weren’t con
cerned about copyright issues.
ELITE’S education program,
which Wilson said will likely
include public service announce
ments on ESTV and possibly
fliers, messages on library com
puter desktops and a Web site,
seeks to raise awareness.
“We just want to inform them,”
Wilson said. “If they listen, that’s
a different story.”
Jackson said he hopes the edu
cation program will singe the
moral conscience - if not the legal
conscience of students.
“It’s a fairness and ethical
issue,” Jackson said of online file
sharing. “This is the creative work
of people that need to be compen
sated.”
Elon’s informative approach
falls somewhere in the middle of
actions taken by other schools.
With regard to the sharing of
copyrighted material on campus
networks, Jackson said colleges
have taken a wide range of
approaches.
“Some people are saying we’U
disconnect you from the network,
some say we’ll take disciplinary
action and some have done noth
ing,” Jackson said.
Wilson said ELITE expects to
launch the educational campaign
by the end of the semester, if not
sooner.
Have you been
subpoenaed?
You can find out by
entering In your IP
address at the web site
for the Electronic
Frontier Foundation;
http://www. eff. org/IP/P2P/
riaasubpoenas/
Contact Steve Earley at pendu-
lum@elon.edu or 278-7247.
Former presidential adviser named visiting professor
/■
Steve Earley
Photo Courtesy of University Relations
Fotwer presidential adviser David Gergen will be on campus during Winter lean 2004.
News Editor
David Gergen, who as an adviser to
four U.S. presidents had a front row seat
for some of the more significant events of
the late 20th century — including the open
ing of Western relations with China, the
end of the Cold War and the formation of
NAFTA — will be Elon's first Isabella
Cannon Visiting Professor of Leadership
during Winter Term 2004.
The visiting professor program, which
will bring a nationally-recognized leader
to Elon at least once a year, is made possi
ble by a gift from the estate of the late
Isabella Cannon, the 1924 Elon alumnus
and former mayor of Raleigh who,
although she had no biological children,
commonly referred to students in the
Isabella Cannon Leadership Fellows as
"her children," said assistant to the presi
dent Susan Peterson.
Gergen, now the editor-at-large for
U.S. News and World Report and a profes
sor of public service at the John F.
Kennedy School of Government, is sched
uled to be on campus for six days in
January.
As part of the new professorship, he is
scheduled to conduct seminars with three
leadership-based classes, meet with small
groups of leadership students, hold a ques-
tion-and-answer session for select classes
in Whitley Auditorium and deliver three
public lectures in McCrary Theatre.
While the dates are set for the three
public lectures — Jan. 6, 12 and 14 — the
exact topics are not. Tentatively, Gergen
will focus on the significant decisions of
international and U.S. leaders. However,
Peterson said that Gergen has made it
clear he doesn't want the lecture titles
etched in stone. "What that says to me is
we won't be getting a canned presenta
tion," Peterson said.
Peterson said Gergen's candidness is
something she noticed during Gergen's
two previous visits to Elon — as a panelist
for a symposium on the presidency in
January 2001 and as the interviewer for
Walter Cronkite in April 2003.
"The thing I remember about him is he
was so involved with the students," she
said. "He really gives his full attention to
whoever is talking to him at the time."
The second Isabella Cannon Professor
of Leadership will be former ABC News
anchor Stephen Bell, who is scheduled to
be on campus in February 2004.
Bell, now a professor of telecommuni
cations at Ball State University, was a
White House correspondent during
Watergate and a correspondent in Vietnam
during the Vietnam War.
Contact Steve Earley at
pendulum@elon.edu or 278-7247.